
Tim Miller: Hereās some more ways the politicians and colleges are screwing the pooch, round two.
Meg Griffin (from Family Guy): Iām never gonna get into college.
Miller: This is āNot My Partyā brought to you by The Bulwark. Okay yāall, if you missed last weekās episode on college costs, student loans, and paying student athletes, go there and check it out.
Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez in CODA): Educate yourself.
Miller: But now itās time to air out the big one in the news lately: affirmative action.
Solomon Veasey (Philip Seymour Hoffman in Cold Mountain): This is a tricky one.
Miller: Even back in my Republican days I was always more sympathetic to affirmative action than your average conservative. The reality is, black folks in particular have been systemically screwed over for a long time.
Chris Turk (Donald Faison on Scrubs): You donāt say?
Miller: College access was the critical way to begin righting that injustice. But weāve landed in a place where affirmative action has gotten really toxic. Black folksā accomplishments are being diminished by racist assholes.
Charlie Kirk: āIām only here because of affirmative action.ā We know. You had to go steal a white personās slot. You do not have the brain-processing power.
Miller: Asian high schoolers who work hard and play by the rules are getting screwed over and some are rightfully resentful. The whole thingās a mess.
Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage in The Family Man): Itās complicated.
Miller: So while I think the Supreme Court issuing a near-total ban on race-based admission policies is too extreme, my hope is that it motivates schools to take a different, more equitable approach to admissions. They should change their focus to giving a leg up to people from poor communities everywhereābe it black kids from the West Bank in NOLA or white kids from Appalachiaābecause thatās where schools can have the biggest impact.
Dennyās Applebeeās Max Manager (from South Park: Post Covid): Thatās a pretty goddamn good idea.
Miller: But making that change doesnāt solve everything, ācause look what else is here: SAT scores.
Patrick (from SpongeBob SquarePants): Testing, testing, testing, testing.
Miller: The new fad for college admissions officers trying to achieve equity is to stop considering standardized tests because theyāre racist or something. That is insane.
George Costanzo (Jason Alexander on Seinfeld): I donāt think itās gonna work out.
Miller: Who do you think is going to have more resources to help them write a good college essay? The rich kid in the burbs with a tutor or poor kids who gotta work after school?
Philip J. Fry (from Futurama): Tough call.
Miller: Standardized tests arenāt perfect but a recent study revealed something interesting about SAT scores. When elite universities look only at scores the group that gets the short end of the stick is the middle class, not poor people of color. Take a look. The people that get the biggest advantage, the 0.1 percent.
Stewie Griffin (from Family Guy): Whaaat?
Miller: Because I guess these hedge fundsāI mean universitiesāneed even more money from people like Jared Kushnerās daddy despite skyrocketing tuition costs and the fact that they donāt pay much at all in taxes. Why is Harvard only paying 1 percent in taxes on their endowment again?
Donna Tubbs-Brown (from The Cleveland Show): What?
Cleveland Brown (from The Cleveland Show): Hold up.
Miller: But interesting, by comparison, high-achieving poor kids are doing pretty well, too. So for now the group thatās really screwed is the big middle. Itās kids who score well on tests but whose parents donāt make enough money to pay these skyrocketing tuitions but arenāt poor enough to get substantial aid. Theyāre the ones whoāve really been left holding the bag.
Marge Simpson (from The Simpsons): You just canāt win.
Miller: The right way to fix that is not dumping standardized tests that have helped high-achieving kids from marginalized communities. Itās ending the affirmative action for uber-wealthy legacies who get in only because their parents make big donations.
Walter Beckett (from Spies in Disguise): We should probably do something about that.
Miller: And our last topic to air out: cancel culture.
Sam Rutherford (from Star Trek: Lower Decks): Oh, ho, ho, ho, spicy.
Miller: We hear plenty about conservative teachers and students who are canceled by liberal universities.
Abe Simpson (from The Simpsons): Have you ever read āThe Boy Who Cried Wolfā?
Miller: And some of those cases are legit BS. But the problem isnāt just a one-way street.
Ashley Goudeau: Texas A&M University professor . . . was placed on leave and investigated after she was accused of making negative comments about Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick during a lecture.
Miller: You didnāt hear a lot about that one from the cancel-culture brigade.
Max Tennyson (from Ben 10): Thatās very odd.
Miller: My view? How about we stop doing this sh** everywhere? College is for learning and trying out opinions and debating. The last thing we need in our country is a divide between the woke colleges and the anti-woke colleges that are now sprouting up in Texas and Florida and elsewhere. We need a system where every kid has access and they can debate their views openly without interference from politicians waging phony culture wars because they wonāt address the real problem.
Lisa Simpson (from The Simpsons): Getting an advanced education.
Miller: See you next week for more āNot My Party.ā